Qualla: University of North Carolina Wilmington

University of North Carolina Wilmington: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jameslwoodward, CC BY-SA 3.0. It opened on September 4, 1947, in the basement of Isaac Bear Elementary School on Market Street, with 238 students and no campus to speak of. Of those 238, more than three out of four - 77 percent - were veterans, men returning from the Pacific or Europe with G.I. Bill tuition checks and not much idea of what they wanted to do next. The new school called itself Wilmington College. It offered freshman-level courses, nothing more. There was no plan for it to become a four-year college, much less a state university with marine science labs and a teal-and-gold seahawk on its flag. None of that was visible yet. There was just an old elementary school and a country trying to absorb its veterans.

Image: Jameslwoodward | CC BY-SA 3.0

University of North Carolina Wilmington: A College Born of the G.I. Bill

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edward Orde, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wilmington College was, in its earliest years, exactly the kind of place the G.I. Bill had been designed to fill. The New Hanover County Board of Education ran it. Accreditation came in 1948 from the North Carolina College Conference; in 1952 the more important Southern Associati...

Image: Edward Orde | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of North Carolina Wilmington: Opening Doors

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. Like most public Southern colleges, Wilmington College admitted only white students at first. That changed in 1962, when Marshall Collins and Ernest Fullwood enrolled as the school's first Black students - eight years after Brown v. Board, two years before the Civil Rights Act of...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of North Carolina Wilmington: Becoming a University

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tnewman39, CC BY-SA 4.0. On July 1, 1963, the North Carolina General Assembly granted Wilmington College the authority to award bachelor's degrees. Six years later, on July 1, 1969, the college was elevated to university status and renamed the University of North Carolina at Wilmington - the fifth campus...

Image: Tnewman39 | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of North Carolina Wilmington: By the Sea

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BSLRed, CC BY-SA 3.0. The unofficial nickname is UNC by the Sea, and the sea is close enough for it to feel earned. Wrightsville Beach is six miles east. The Center for Marine Science, on Myrtle Grove Sound, runs research vessels into estuaries that students can walk to. The school color is teal, whic...

Image: BSLRed | CC BY-SA 3.0

University of North Carolina Wilmington: Randall Library, Reopened

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DiscoA340, CC BY-SA 4.0. The university's library reopened in August 2024 after a two-year, eighty-thousand-square-foot expansion that more than doubled its size. The original Randall Hall, named for William Madison Randall, the school's third chief executive, kept its name and original entrance. The new...

Image: DiscoA340 | CC BY-SA 4.0